What Modi said and what they felt

Those who had expected fireworks from Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi during his speech at the Ficci Ladies Organization (FLO) on Monday may have been disappointed.

TNN | Updated: Apr 9, 2013, 05:44 IST

VIEWAudience reaction showed he may have earned his lunch

Those who had expected fireworks from Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi during his speech at the Ficci Ladies Organization (FLO) on Monday may have been disappointed. Conscious of the fact that his address had been billed as the “Modi vs Rahul” duel, the Gujarat chief minister adopted an easy going, soft and emotional approach to strike an instant connect with theaudience. And he also managed to keep the “beehive” out of the way.

His emphasis on empowering women, often using the image of the “mother” and “sister” to drive home the importance of women in Indian society, seemed to work well as the audience listened to his somewhat long-winded speech with rapt attention.

Modi, like Rahul, also used several anecdotes. But Modi’s examples were real life success stories ranging from Jassu behn’s hot selling pizzas to Ganga Ba who gave the charkha to Mahatma Gandhi. The women’s cooperative behind the hugely successful “Lijjat Papad” was also highlighted as a story of women’s empowerment.

Without adopting a shrill or confrontationist tone, Modi used the women business leaders’ forum to articulate the multiple women-friendly policies his government had been able to push through. By invoking the “mother-sister” image and highlighting the “entrepreneurial spirit” of women, he was successful in his attempt to woo the audience , consisting of both modern as well those who belonged to the so called “brick and mortar” business families.

Modi’s speech is bound to be compared with Rahul’s CII address last week. Modi being a veteran campaigner deliberately adopted a different approach . Except three instances where he made some reference to politics of the day, Modi stitched together several believable examples to create a message for women’s empowerment. To slam him for painting the “stereotype” image of women could be a bit harsh. Modi was using these examples to glorify the role of Indian women who despite odds have emerged successful.

He also referred to the social media several times and urged women to connect with him using these tools and suggest ideas and policies. This was a clever attempt to balance the traditional and the modern. Judging the reaction of his audience in the hall, it appeared Modi had earned his lunch.

COUNTERVIEW

The Gujarat CM didn’t come across as a pro-woman leader

Rukmini Shrinivasan

Since Narendra Modi’s speech centred around women and work, my objections to it are purely feminist. Few seem to understand what the word means any more, so for the purposes of this piece, my definition of a feminist is a person who believes in equality between men and women, and can see patriarchy where it exists.

On Monday, it existed in its usual places in offices, classrooms, on the streets, in homes, online — and also in Modi’s words. For one, Modi suffers from the common Indian disease of being unable to talk respectfully about women without first making them your sisters or mothers. The danger in this formulation is that it encourages men to think of women outside such familial ties as less worthy of respect.

Their non-sisterliness is dangerous, just as female sexuality and independence of thought is dangerous to the men of this country, as any woman who tries to dress as she pleases or say what she feels will attest to.

Secondly, many of Modi’s anecdotes were patronizing. His long-winded story of the woman who abandons a sari sale to save her child from a burning building was a laughable amalgamation of the most cringe-worthy stereotypes about women. Even worse was his advice to families to let women run the CSR wings of their businesses . Yes, there are men who tell their mothers not to interfere in shop talk when they come to serve them tea, but it’s hardly something worth reminding a roomful of female industry leaders. Modi’s homilies about families and women seemed to come straight from ’80s Hindi movies, and there’s a good reason everyone would rather forget the ’80s.

I anticipate I will be told that Modi’s speech connected with the aam aurat, someone who I sitting in Delhi presumably know nothing about. I have two objections to this: the first is to my views being dismissed because I am an educated urban woman. Secondly, to the contention that the average class V-pass rural woman necessarily agrees with Modi’s view.

Modi has in the past made crude remarks about women. The BJP in Gujarat found only 19 women to give tickets to in 2012. The state has extremely low female labour force participation and poor health indicators for women. Modi has not struck me as a particularly prowoman leader, and this speech did not change my mind.

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